


down the edges of the distant sky

by jencat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Exes, F/M, Found Family, Pod is a dog, Second Chances, a truly ridiculous amount of nature imagery incoming, brienne is a nature writer, but with pretty much everything changed, jaime is a wildlife photographer, very vaguely based on the crane wife essay by cj hauser
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:55:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28464921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jencat/pseuds/jencat
Summary: She thinks about how she doesn't have the house, now, or the fiance (and, mostly, what that means for the mortgage, because who needs that kind of issue on their credit rating at her age), while she's trawling the nearest outdoor gear shop for rainproofs, and gaiters, and rubber shoes with holes in them for drainage— for things she used to own, and now needs again.***Brienne calls off her wedding, and goes on a trip to Harrenhal.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 20
Kudos: 76
Collections: JB Festive Festival Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/gifts).



> There’s a very long and complicated story of how this story ended up the way it did, but suffice to say I read CJ Hauser’s essay The Crane Wife a few months ago, and immediately filed it away as a JB AU, but never quite figured out how. And then after a lot of brainstorming, I kind of saw a way to do something fairly completely different to fit Roccolinde’s exchange prompts of exes, second chances, and competence kink.
> 
> I’ve wholesale stolen a fair few things from the original essay, and I cannot thank enough weboury for helping me brainstorm a gazillion ideas, and languageintostillair for very patiently betaing this!

_As down the edges of the distant sky_

_The hailstorm sweeps-..._

_While far above the solitary crane_

_Swings lonly to unfrozen dykes again_

_Cranking a jarring mellancholy cry_

_Thro the wild journey of the cheerless sky_

_**John Clare - The Shepherd's Calendar, March** _

Ten days after she calls the wedding off, Brienne locks the door of the house they shared for the last time and drives away with her dog, and a car full of the other things she actually couldn't bear to part with.

"It's the sunk cost fallacy," Sansa tells her sagely, later. "You kept hanging on because you'd invested so much in it already. That's absolutely a thing people do."

Brienne isn't sure that that's quite it; still isn't quite sure how she came to be staying in Sansa's spare room with her dog, and with her belongings mostly somewhere in storage, because two weeks ago she was getting married, and now she's— 

Now she's—

She's sleeping too much, and not writing, and every so often Pod will whine inconsolably because they're staying somewhere with no garden and he doesn't _understand._ How could he understand, she thinks: she was the one that set the whole unholy mess in motion, and _she_ certainly doesn't understand it. She misses the house, and doesn't miss it. She misses the willow trees, and the garden, and the way she could sit and drink her tea and watch the sun come up undisturbed for a while. She doesn't miss how much time she spent feeling unsettled, out of kilter, like she'd done something wrong _,_ while she lived there. She's been shivering, on and off since it happened; like it's a fever, like it's a sickness. The world feels too loud, too bright, too _much._

She barely feels it at all _._

And every so often she remembers that Meera called, about an article on the crane study at Harrenhal.

***

She doesn't think about the cranes so often these days. They belonged to a version of herself she hadn't considered in a long time now. _A girl_ , she would think, irritably, sometimes. Someone who would gladly spend a summer on her own in the middle of nowhere, dealing with the mosquitoes and trench foot required to get an incredibly vague idea of why a small population of very tall, very loud, very rare migrating birds would have accidentally taken up permanent residence in what was left of the fragile wetlands back on Tarth. They weren't supposed to stay there - staying wasn't what you did, on Tarth - and yet, they did. They had. It was important work, and simultaneously something hardly anyone else cared about, and Brienne liked it that way.

And then, after— After, she had grown up, and quit field work, and quit Tarth, and learned that sometimes you _could_ get people to care, just enough, if you used the right words— 

That was what she'd done, after she had grown up, and got a house, and a fiance, and a _mortgage_ (but not the dog; she'd still had the dog when she was young and not-grown-up). She'd passed thirty, and she wrote about conservation and ecology for three different national papers, and two popular science journals, and sometimes she got called up for relevant soundbites on radio talk shows. She thought she knew what was important. She was sure.

***

She thinks about how she doesn't have the house, now, or the fiance (and, mostly, what that means for the mortgage, because who needs that kind of issue on their credit rating at her age), while she's trawling the nearest outdoor gear shop for rainproofs, and gaiters, and rubber shoes with holes in them for drainage— for things she used to own, and now needs again. Because she agreed to go write about one of Meera's civilian fieldwork trips, when Meera called. Because Meera is an excellent, if slightly eccentric, biologist; and part of a family of biologists who had single-handedly done more for the repopulation of the common crane in Westeros than anyone else Brienne can think of. That seems important now, and it had still seemed important when Meera called, even before Brienne called off the wedding.

***

_The common crane in Westeros is a scarce migrant, and a localised breeding resident. They were rendered extinct here centuries ago, through over-hunting and loss of habitat. Kings used to feast upon them by the dozen, by the hundreds._

_We were the reason they vanished, and now we're the reason they're back._

This is true, and not quite true.

***

Brienne drives north at dawn, on the fifteenth day after calling off her engagement. It wasn't something to be taken lightly, four hundred miles of lonely road, and Sansa had fussed over Brienne's insistence that no, a last minute flight up there wouldn't be a better option. She'd driven it before, once, years ago, and it wasn't a complicated route — just a long day at the end of it. And she had Pod, for company. It was fine. 

The traffic eases once she clears the outskirts of King's Landing; she hasn't been this far north in years, and it's a blur of seeing what is still there that she remembers along the road, and what has gone. She remembers reading about some of it - a floodplain torn up to make space for the airport extension; houses now where there had been woodland. It had been dark last time she had driven this part of the Kingsroad, years ago, she thinks. It's still chilly, this early, and the morning light is molten gold in places where it hits the Blackwater. 

She watches the flashes of light flicker across the river estuary, and thinks she shouldn't be enjoying this; she shouldn't be enjoying the part where she's driving in the opposite direction to where her life was, away from the wreckage she has left behind. She doesn't even really have anywhere to _live_ right now. Surely there's some kind of feeling of responsibility that will kick in shortly. Surely she isn't really free of it. That's not how it works. Surely.

The shape of the things that are gone now are nagging at her like a missing tooth, but she doesn't have anything left to parse it with. She hasn't had anything left for that in a long time now.

***

Meera is waiting outside the lodge for her when Brienne finally pulls up; the low winter sun already sinking fast behind the hills; far behind the dark wreck of the castle, this soon after solstice. The last few roads out to this part of the Gods Eye shore had been stuttering, unpaved tracks, and Pod is looking at her balefully after a half hour spent being rattled around in the passenger seat. 

She climbs out of the car stiffly, and raises a hand in greeting to Meera, who looks entirely the same as she had the last time Brienne had seen her, four years back at a conference. They don't keep in touch so much these days; don't do so much as exchange cards at Sevenmas but— When Meera had called this time, she hadn't really hesitated to say, _yes, of course, whatever you need_. She's not sure if it's something that could be considered a character flaw; this need to be of use.

Meera takes one of her bags to carry inside; fusses hello to Pod and says, "Jojen will be back in a bit, he's off collecting them all from the airport. It'll be fun. This trip _always_ attracts a weird bunch," and Brienne smiles.

It's a real smile for once; not solely intended to reassure the world she's okay; not there to keep the mask in place. It's the kind of smile she usually only makes these days when she forgets, for a moment. She's not forgetting right now though; not even nearly distracted, and she smiles anyway; even though; _because_. She glances back over at the darkening lakeshore behind them; the scent of green things and mud in the winter air, and thinks that perhaps it's that these field studies cost about the same as a fancy week on the beach in Dorne, but the chance to spend a week away from your life doing something actively useful is rare enough. Leisure can be an easy enough thing to buy; purpose is something more difficult altogether.

She looks back at Meera as they make their way inside the lodge; lets out a long breath that turns into something closer to a laugh, "Well, then, I'm honoured to be included."

"Of course you are," Meera says cheerfully, and stops inside the door to drop her bag in the hallway; Brienne does the same, and follows her into the kitchen with Pod at her heels, glad to be out of the cold. 

She hasn't been to the lodge before; last time at Harrenhal she'd stayed in the small guesthouse over on the other shore, by the ruined castle. It's pleasantly warm inside after the winter chill, most of the space taken up by a scarred wooden table with enough space to seat a dozen. It smells of old pine and woodsmoke; of whatever pleasant thing is in the pot simmering away on the hob, and Brienne feels something unknot in her chest. 

Meera clatters the kettle onto the stove; holds up a battered enamel mug, and Brienne nods gratefully. "We'll see if you still feel that way after a couple of days with everyone out on the lake — especially when Jojen starts getting grumpy about having to share his beloved cranes with other people again."

Brienne sits down at the table, Pod settling beside her, and she thinks about how he'll need dinner soon; about fetching his bed in from the car. "I think I've been slightly guilty of being grumpy about that too, on occasion. When you put so much of your life into something—"

"Oh, but— you know that's what I'm always trying to explain to him," Meera sets the mugs down on the counter next to the stove, drops a teabag into each one, and turns back to her. "If it was just _us_ interacting with them; if it was enough to keep them on our land down at Greywater, it wouldn't matter so much. But—"

She leans back against the counter, and sighs, more pensive than Brienne remembers ever seeing her before. "We don't have enough of the right environment down there, and we all understand that. Up here... there's always been more of a chance for the flock to establish themselves — and they _have_ , it's been extraordinary. But there are also farmers and local government, and poachers and fishermen, and tourists and… You know how it goes. We have to win over all of them too. We have to keep making them understand how important it is."

Brienne takes a deep breath, reaches down to brush her fingers across the wiry ruff of Pod's neck. "Have you been having more trouble with it, of late?"

The kettle starts to whistle, and Meera shrugs, a little helplessly; turns back to pour the water. "Nothing drastic, just… People talking about development, more power line collisions than we'd like, already." 

She leaves the tea brewing, and tips the lid of the pot on the stove to check on it. "I mean, we do these study trips a few times a year, that's a small part of it. But, on a larger scale? The land around here needs more protection than we can afford. And part of _that_ is the kind of coverage that can win people over about things like this, Brienne — you're known for that. And we know we can't just keep them safe and alive all by ourselves anymore. That's never been how it works."

It feels a heavy thing, what's she's being asked; what's being offered. She says, _of course,_ and drinks the tea that was offered, gratefully, and sends Sansa a text to say she arrived safely, and it's quiet for a while, in the kitchen while they wait.

She's outside already when the 4x4 pulls up, gathering up Pod's things from her car. She recognises Jojen's skinny figure at the wheel even in the dark; locks her car up and takes a few steps back towards the lodge to be out of the way just as Meera appears in the doorway.

She's not really paying attention when one of the other members of their group climbs out of the passenger seat, though; apparently midway through a spirited discussion with Jojen that he looks to be enjoying far too much. The floodlights across the yard are white and harsh, and do nobody any favours at all, but the lines of his face in the pale light are still warmly familiar in a way that makes her breath catch; makes her heart clench. _It's been years,_ she thinks _, years and years and no reason to be here at all._

She can't move for a long moment, trying to breath; trying not to remember the last time she saw him, getting out of a car and walking away. It shouldn't still be like this, it shouldn't have hit her quite this hard.

She watches in mute apprehension as Pod realises he's not getting dinner right that moment, and trots off to go investigate the new arrivals, and she doesn't do anything to call him back. She can't seem to— _Any minute now._ He'll recognise Pod. He'll look across the yard and recognise her, and she wishes she had the faintest clue what would be running through his head when he does.

Meera reaches to take the bag of Pod's food from her, and Brienne lets it go with numb fingers. "Thank the gods, we can finally eat. You must be starving."

Brienne shakes her head slightly — she hasn't been hungry in the longest time, she thinks, she's almost forgotten what it feels like — and Meera follows the direction of her stare.

"Oh— it's a Lannister. I know. Don't be too harsh on him, he shows up for this one every year like clockwork, and usually with a camera that costs more than my house. I know exactly what you're going to say, but—"

"I bet you don't." Brienne says, very faintly indeed.

Across the yard, his breath pluming white under the floodlights, Jaime looks up from greeting Pod— He sees her, and he smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

She nearly treads on his camera, the first day they meet. She'd been alone out on the fens for three weeks already by then, careful to avoid the odd tourist or birdwatcher out to see Unspoiled Tarth™ this early in the season. She thought she'd been keeping an eye on the usual parking spots up by the main road, and it's not like she honestly expected to trip over some fool with a ridiculously expensive zoom lens hiding out in the reed beds.

(After all, seven years ago, hiding out in the reed beds was _her_ particular thing.)

She'd been fixed on something she thought she spotted down against the glimmering of the shallow water when she takes a step backwards, slowly, carefully; signalling Pod to be still, clutching for her binoculars, and trying desperately not to spook her quarry.

The glint of the camera lens in the sun catches her eye just slightly too late. The only way to _avoid_ said camera — and its highly inconvenient owner — by the absolute skin of her teeth, is mostly by ending up on her arse in the mud.

She lays there winded for a moment, pointedly ignoring the muffled sound of surprise from the human trip hazard in the mud beside her. It’s only when she turns her head that she catches the slightest movement through the reeds, further down by the water, and she hisses, " _Fuck—"_

— and then they both freeze, as a blare of noise rises sharp above the usual hum of insects and the distant cries of other birds.

For the barest perfect moment, she sees one of the cranes outlined above them in flight, the curve of its neck and the sharp flare of its flight feathers silhouetted against the blue summer sky.

Brienne tips her head back and watches it disappear over the rise of the ridge, the last of its cry echoing in the stillness; hears the fen start to settle down around her again in the spring sunshine. It's always quiet in the busiest way on days like this; the first of the warmth sending everything out there a little frantic — but it's all background noise to her right now. Nothing; _none_ of it holds a candle to what she just heard. 

In the quiet-that-isn't, she also hears the sound of the inconsiderate idiot lying next to her, shaking in near-silent, hysterical laughter.

She sits up abruptly, reaching for her squashed and muddied day pack; trying to retrieve the binoculars tangled up around her neck, and glares at him. It has absolutely no effect, because he's still laid out flat on his back, eyes closed and clutching his giant ridiculous camera to his chest while he wheezes for breath.

"I've been out here _four days_ waiting for that bloody bird to show up in the right light and— It _shows up_ , I still miss the shot— and it— _it sounds like a fucking kazoo_."

"Like a _what?"_ She clambers to her feet too quickly, feeling the mud soaking through the hem of her shorts and clinging to her bare legs; glances around to see Pod snuffling a few yards away. "Did you hit your head on something?"

He opens his eyes and squints up at her. "A kazoo — you know, like the instrument? You're very tall, aren't you." He blinks in the sun, lazily amused and covered in mud, and she tries not to register that, despite all these things, he's maybe quite ridiculously pretty, in addition to being an inconsiderate arse. And possibly concussed.

"I know what it _is_ , and it's not even remotely like a crane call. You can hear them three _miles_ away. They used to say a migrating flock was like— like hearing an army approach in battle—" She hears suddenly how strident her voice sounds; how hushed everything else around them has become. She swallows down the rest of it, and feels herself flush. It's been over a week since she talked to anyone other than Pod, she thinks; it's understandable to be a little out of practice.

He holds the camera out of the way; sits up with a lazy grace she's really not surprised at, and she takes a step back. "Okay," he says. "Very tall, and very into cranes then? That makes sense."

"I'm not—," she tells him, too quickly, and feels her heart rate pick up again. She knows she should be doing something other than standing there arguing, but her brain won't quite get in gear. She also knows she should offer to help him up off the ground, and she doesn't trust herself to offer, all at the same time. "I just study them. That's what I do. What I'm doing here. I didn't expect— it's not the time of year for tourists."

"Oh, I'm not a tourist," He gestures with the giant ridiculous camera. She can't for the life of her understand why he's still sitting down in the mud. "This is work."

Brienne smiles, tight-lipped. "You're not from the island, ergo— you're a tourist."

For a second she thinks she recognises something in his answering smile; something sharp-edged and wary before it's smoothed away, and he's still looking at her. For all she feels the mud starting to dry on her bare skin in the warmth of it, she's unreasonably glad the sun is at her back, and in his eyes.

"So I'm a tourist," he says, and she just _knows_ he's mocking her now. "I'm a _tourist_ , and you're... Oh _, you—_ you're that Tarth girl the nice man in the village shop was telling me about this morning, aren't you? Don— Donal something? And may I say, he's absolutely right - what a _great_ advert for the Tarth Tourist Board you are, too."

Brienne takes a deep, calming breath and whistles for Pod at that point; a short, sharp blast that has the pleasant consequence of making her interloper wince— and is blindingly unnecessary, seeing as Pod is all of three feet away. She makes a point of gathering up her mud-spattered belongings, and what's left of her dignity. "Donal Mack can go fuck himself. And so can you."

Pod appears at her feet, and she takes the barest moment to consider how the _tourist_ reaches out to greet him; an easy warmth to it that irritates her for no good reason. Of course he likes Pod. _Everyone_ loves Pod. He has soft fur and a sweet face; he's small, and harmless-looking, and they never see the way he goes after a rat with such absolute tenacity that it inevitably ends in snapped necks and small, still-warm corpses. Pod is very much _hers._

"I don't know why you're so upset," he says. "You just trampled over _me._ And we're both just here doing the same thing, aren't we?"

She looks at him again, and something clicks about that handsome face; beneath the mud, and that perfect three day beard. She shivers in the sun, and thinks suddenly of rivers running yellow in Essos; about dams, and wild broken things.

"Oh," she says, "Of _course_ we're doing the same thing. I had to fill out seven overly complicated grant proposals and lodge a formal notice with the Department of Wildlife. You just... show up with a giant camera. Those things are absolutely comparable."

He grins at her for a moment, seemingly genuinely amused; climbs to his feet at last with that same arrogant grace. He's only barely shorter than her, and she doesn't look down to see how much mud he's covered in now. "I knew you'd see the light. And it _is_ a really very nice camera for taking pictures of, say, cranes. I'm Jaime—"

" _Lannister,"_ she says. "I know. There's really quite an impressive amount of research into habitat destruction by mining corporations that also mentions your name. And now you're here, on my island - I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled we must be."

He goes very still, as predators do when you spot them; the smile still fixed, and yet somehow not amused at all now. The sun is hot on her back, and she watches him swallow; but not with nerves, she thinks. She feels like she could be shaking herself now, with a kind of cold fury, but she can't imagine him with nerves.

"You know very well it's not _my_ name, exactly, on all that research about Casterly, don't you?" Jaime Lannister asks her, quietly.

Brienne shakes her head, and looks away from him; looks around at the only tiny piece of Tarth left that nobody had wanted; the only place where anything as large and as rare as the cranes could possibly have settled. She still doesn't really understand why, and she doesn't want to be talking about this any more. She turns away, and leaves Jaime Lannister standing in the mud. He’s still watching her, but he doesn't seem to have anything else left to say. Pod follows her like a small, unwavering shadow.

"You make sure to enjoy your time looking for cranes here on Tarth, Mr. Lannister." She calls back over her shoulder. "I suppose I should be thankful you're only trying to shoot them with a camera."

***

The cranes that are resident at Harrenhal now — the cranes whose habitat they are to study, out on the lake this week — had originally been raised in captivity, by a team led by Meera and Jojen's father. It was fascinating, and complex, really, the method Howland Reed's team had used— and yet there were very simple rules. 

The crane chicks would imprint on their keepers, given the opportunity — so they never saw a human face, or a human shape: only faceless figures, garbed in shapeless grey. Their food was delivered via a paper mache crane's head, in some mummery of their never-known parents. They never saw a human face— but then, they never saw an adult crane either.

Brienne knows very well how long the process took to develop; how many half-grown cranes had not survived previous attempts elsewhere, over and over again, for this to be fixed on as the path that would give them the best chance. She trained in this; she understands; knows the hows and the whys. But sometimes, still, it made her think of psychology experiments she had studied: monkeys raised with cloth mothers, or none at all. That they will choose that over survival, sometimes. Trying to understand what a child will do for comfort; what anyone will do, for something resembling love.

***

She’s never known anyone who smiles as easily as Jaime; Brienne is almost startlingly aware of that. It always felt like a reflex with him back then; some kind of defence mechanism. _It doesn’t have to mean anything_ , she tells herself now, still standing on the doorstep of the lodge. Now she knows that he’s seen her, and that he’s smiling. 

The world is cold and white beneath the floodlights. She watches him prop a bag against the car, and walk towards her. It’s unreal. 

He says, a little breathless, “I thought I was seeing things, for a moment there, but— You’re really here, aren’t you?” 

She isn’t entirely sure what she does, then. Maybe she nods, _yes._ Maybe she watches him smile again— and then he’s gone back to the car before anyone else even notices; before she can even find her voice.

She turns to go back inside, and doesn’t think about how he sounds exactly the same as he did back then. She sets the dog bed down in a corner, and wonders what he saw when he looked at her. She wonders, and hopes she wasn’t imagining the pleasure in his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mostly borrowed the vibe for this chapter from some very vague memories of the opening chapter of Barbara Kingsolver's book Prodigal Summer... Which, wow, turned out to be SO much thirstier when I revisited it later, who knew.


End file.
